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Church Organist 44 Years Is Retiring

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NEW BRUNSWICK — A soft‐spoken Kentuckian who is equally at home at the console of an organ, bending over a skillet in his kitchen or pounding out ragtime at a party will hang up his black gown tomorrow and retire after 44 years as organist and choirmaster of the city's Christ Church Episcopal.

Next Thursday, on his 70th birthday, George Huddleston will be feted at a dinner party by his friends, former students, church associates and admireks in this area.

Mr. Huddleston is the dean of the Middlesex chapter of the American Guild of Organists and an organizer of men's and boys’ church choirs for more than four decades. He has been the organist for Christ Church during that entire period.

Mr. Huddleston is a bachelor and one of the area's most sought after dinnerparty guests. He already has alerted Canon Frank V. H. Carthy, the rector of Christ church, that he will he “skipping church services for a few Sundays” after his retirement.

“Frankly, I don't want to sit there and look at my successor and make him feel uncomfortable,"’ Mr. Huddleston said, “I remember that just before I took over as organist here—young, and, am afraid, somewhat excessively self‐confident—I behaved most regrettably. came to church services on Sunday, and sat staring at the organist I was to succeed.

“I believe I was trying to convey to him the idea that the organ‐playing in this church was about to be vastly improved. Now I'm embarrassed to recall my behavior.”

Mr. Huddleston, who was born in Fulton, Ky., studied chiefly with private teachers. He never attended a conservatory and never bothered to take academic degrees.

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From $4 piano lessons with local women teachers in Fulton, Mr. Huddleston moved on to study piano.and organ in the Music Department at the University of Louisville. Nearly five decades ago, he landed his first job as an organist at Trinity Church in Cranford.

Mr. Huddleston lives in an apartment in neighboring Highland Park, where he regales friends with Kentucky stories at his popular dinner parties, plays Bach and boogie on the piano and serves splendid dinners.

His cuisine, he says, “falls just below the haute and rises above middle French, mostly in the Julia Child genre.”

Guests say that Mr. Huddleston is unduly Modest about his culinary skills.

“When people go to a bachelor's place and the food is edible, they think it's good,” Mr. Huddleston said. “If the food is good, they consider it gourmet cooking.

Mr. Huddleston commanded a quartermaster company and became a captain during World War H. One of his sergeants was Eric Leinsdorf, the noted conductor.

“I once said to him,” Mr. Huddleston recalled, “Sergeant, why has no one arranged. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B‐minor for orchester?”

“But it's already been done, captain,” Sergeant Leinsdorf replied.

“By whom?” I asked.

“By me,” he said.

“Later,” Mr. Huddleston recounted, “Eric sent his conductor's score of it to me. A symphony orchestra borrowed it from me and then reported they had lost it.”

Mr. Huddleston says he will keep his bachelor apartment, and go on cooking, playing the piano and enjoying his books, his music and his friendships. And he says he will stay in New Jersey, a state that has “everything I, need.”

A version of this archives appears in print on September 22, 1974, on Page 94 of the New York edition with the headline: Church Organist 44 Years Is Retiring. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe